Our attention has been drawn to a spurious and baseless publication by a faceless and cowardly group with the malicious intent of blackmailing members of JOHESU, “real working population within the health sector” to whom justice and freedom are being denied and who are striving to maintain their rights for a just wage and conducive working conditions, about a fictitious humanitarian crisis supposedly being created at the NeuroPsychiatric Hospital, Aro-Abeokuta. Ideally, as leaders of JOHESU in Aro, we are not wont to responding to such irrational publications, but we owe it a responsibility to the general public to correct the misinformation and prevent the actual humanitarian crisis that the merchants of such information intend to create by their words, actions and inactions. 

 

Let us remind the general public that this is not the first time such wrong information is being peddled about the famous NPH, Aro-Abeokuta and going by the habitual nature of the rumour mongers and their collaborators whose stock in trade is the circulation of speculative and unsubstantiated news. 

 

We need not remind the public of how these messengers of bad news and their collaborators in the recent wanted the general public to believe that the decision of some “students” (NARD) to abandon their learning posts had paralyzed activities in Aro hospital save the intervention of the JOHESU leadership in the compound who set the records straight by a rejoinder.

 

The truth of the matter is that no person or group of persons has ever pressurized the hospital management to discharge patients because they are on strike. Isn’t it laughable that the writers of the said publication who attempted to create a fictitious severity of the conditions shot themselves in the legs by claiming such patients are “under the watch of a private security outfit”? 

The question begging for answer is as what? Prisoners? Suspects? Criminals? or Patients? Since when did it become the duties of security personnel to take care of mentally ill persons. 

 

One would expect that persons who are supposed to neutralize stigmatization of the mentally ill are the ones championing the cause as is being done via this publication. Isn't it a viable opportunity for the so-called,  self-acclaimed owners of the health sector to live true to their fallacious claims of being able to run the hospital and care for the patients holistically without the input of others? 

 

These rumour mongers have shown that the mentally ill they pretend to care much about are actually saner than they themselves. 

 

It is pathetic that the same hospital management that will not waste time in giving orders for patients to be discharged when their over pampered students (NARD) with over bloated ego who constitute less than 3% of the workforce abandon their learning posts during their illegal strikes are the ones championing that patients be kept in the hospital without care when over 97% of the working population are conspicuously absent as a result of an avoidable industrial action but which the actions and inactions of the federal ministry of health has made inevitable. The noise being made by these set of people only exposes their incompetence and the impossibility of managing the hospital in the absence of other healthcare professionals and workers. 

 

We recall that when recently their students went on their usual illegal strike which lasted about 2 weeks, no one felt their absence as services were being rendered seamlessly without restrictions and no one attempted to cajole or intimidate their members to work against the directives of their association.

 

For the avoidance of doubt, the only thing the leadership of JOHESU in Aro is doing is to ensure that the callous management of Aro hospital do not compel our members who are on strike to sabotage this national efforts by threatening and intimidating them.

 

The only humanitarian crisis on ground in this matter is the one created by the federal government through her agencies; the federal ministries of health and labour by failing to obey court judgments and denying workers who are only striving for their rights, good working conditions and a fair wage. 

 

We call on all well-meaning Nigerians to prevail on the ministers of health and labour and by extension the federal government to accede to the legal requests of the striking JOHESU members to prevent avoidable suffering of innocent nigerian masses and should do the needful to avert the humanitarian crisis which is imminent but avoidable, that the health sector of the nation is being plunged into by their inactions and actions.

 

Finally, as good spirited and patriotic workers,  even in the presence of this brazen and unwarranted intimidation by ARO management, we advice  Dr Adebowale Timothy Olaoluwa, the Acting Provost and MD, to do everything possible and douse the already escalated tension between JOHESU and the Federal government, which he now has decided to personalize and domesticate in the interest of the general public and redress his leadership incapabilities.

 

VIVA JOHESU!!!

VIVA HEALTH WORKERS!!!

VIVA NIGERIAN WORKERS!!!

OPERATION CROCODILE BITE REMAINS.

ALUTA CONTINUA!!!

VICTORIA ASCERTA!!!